 |
|
 |
 |
 March Interview : Richard Parry Bassiste multi-instrumentiste d'Arcade Fire, Richard Parry évolue également au sein de Bell Orchestre avec sa consœur d'Arcade Fire, la violoniste Sarah Neufeld. A few weeks ago, I saw a movie on tv, with Helen Hunt, and Haley Joel Osmond. In that movie, the little boy's homework was to find a way to make the world a better place... Yes I know that movie, Pay it Forward. Exactly... So if you were that little boy, what would you do to make the world a better place ? That's a hard question... But I think I'd do something for the environment. Maybe I'd make a law to ban cars and only allow bicycles, unless of course for long routes... People need to think more about their actions, we are all concerned. Tell me about your childhood.what important lesson about life did you keep from it ? My parent's religion was Quackerism, and it still is a big value from the past... I've learnt that it's important to relax, everyday, and take like 1 hour or just 10 minutes to meditate, to think about your life, and make things clear within yourself... Besides music, do you have any other passion in life ? I like dancing. I'm really interested in "danse contemporaine". I also love swimming, I also like cooking for my friends, but really music takes a lot of my time. What type of person were you as a teenager ? I was rather quiet, I wasn't like a living the high life, I never took drugs or anything, I was more into music. And as a student, I wasn't exactly a good student, I was a good member of the student community though. I didn't go far in my studies, but I was really active in the art domain, went to many concerts... Ok, I asked that because I heard that Sarah was a big brain in high school... [Laughs]... Not me though !! What surprises you most about humankind ? I'm amazed that we still make war on each other, constantly. It seems that even the people who are in a position to actually control these kind of things are not interested in stopping it. What do you think is the essential thing about life that you'd like to share ? I don't know if there is one thing... It's important to be aware that you will not be alive for ever. I think it's really important to be aware of that all the time. I think if you truly realise this, you hopefully will govern your actions slightly differently in your day to day life, and have a bigger picture of everything. When you don't have everything planned in your mind as facts that you can't change, it makes everything different. So I'd say that's one important thing to share. What do you think of religions in general ? What does it inspire in you ? I think it's equally important and equally dangerous, as history has shown us. Religions have always been responsible for a lot of atrocities in the name of ... Are you a believer yourself ? Yes, I'm a quacker. What do you like or dislike about interviews ? It's nice when there are interesting questions like this, and when people are interested in discussing things or talking about ideas, it's nice. It's a conversation where it has like parameters, il y a comme des paramètres, qui sont d?j^ ?tablis, et on n'a pas besoin de se concentrer, tout vient naturellement. You don't have to pay attention or to focus on the social boundaries some way, it's like, here we are, we're here to have a conversation, and ask questions, and that's really nice, to have like a space to create... But sometimes you're in front of someone who doesn't really want to talk, and you're trapped in that space. I get it a lot more with The Arcade Fire, because there's just a lot of people who want to talk with the AF... They always ask you the same questions, and you don't really want to be here discussing the same questions you've been asked a hundred times already, it's like a waste of time, making you feel a little less than human sometimes, but it could be worse. What's the question you've been the most asked during interviews ? Nothing really interesting. Probably influences, I guess that's a standard one. But that's actually an interesting question. What's your answer to that ? It changes everyday. But as a kid, I grew up in a music community, there was an oral tradition, where music was passed on, with everybody singing in harmony with each other. That's really glorious, you're kind of living music in this way. You don't have to be really physically able to play an instrument necessarily, but everybody just kind of learn songs, and everybody sings together, it's beautiful. And those songs are more than a hundred years old, so to realise that you've been given this heritage makes you feel very special. You do feel this is lineage, but it's not specific from individual to individual. I was at friend of mine's wedding like a month ago, we were in a little village in England, in a little pub, from the 16th century, a really old and beautiful building. And we were in there, singing songs, and of course they were slightly different from the ones that I knew, but it made me realise how tied we were to so many generations of people. Are you from England originally ? No, I was born in Canada, but I lived in England for a while, I went back to Canada, when I was 7 or 8 I guess, but I've spent a lot of time over here and have a lot of friends here in Europe...
CHECK OUT
Words Collected by Sandrine Kattoor.
|
|
 |
|
|
|
 |
|
